Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

His eyes became huge as I walked down the aft deck. I put the double barrels close to his left eye. “What was the signal you were supposed to send when you’d got the money?”

“Don’t shoot! For Christ’s sake, don’t shoot!” His teeth were chattering.

“What was the signal you were supposed to send when you’d got the money?” My voice was toneless. There had to be such a signal, I knew.

“Fingers,” he said.

I stared at him. Such a banal word. “Fingers?” I said incredulously.

“Honest! Don’t shoot, please!”

“And where were you taking the money?”

“I don’t know.”

I jerked the barrels to cut one of his eyebrows. “Where, Peel, where?”

“It’s on the little box. I can’t work it. I don’t know, mate.” He was sobbing with terror and cold now. “I don’t know. Mr Garrard worked the box, not me.”

The Decca, of course. I pulled the gun’s triggers, and the hammers fell on to the dead chambers. “Get in the boat if you can,” I said, “and if you can’t, drown.”

The boat slammed down into white water. So far as I could remember the rocks at Les Trois Grunes only dried out at the lowest tides, yet that was small consolation. A dip in the long swell could easily drop us on to one of the rock pinnacles and rip the bottom out of Mist-Spinner , so my first task was to clear Mist-Spinner away from the hazard, and only then look for the clever mind that had spun me through this electronic maze. The night wasn’t over yet, and maybe the killing wasn’t done, but at least I had evened the game.

If Garrard had known boats, he would still have been alive and I would have been dead, for Mist-Spinner had a prop plate. Most working boats have such a plate, put there against the eventuality of drifting across their towed lines. Because no fisherman wants to go overboard to clear a fouled prop, just aft of the stern-box they put a bolted plate which, lifted, gives access to the propeller.

I found some tools in the wheelhouse. It needed all my strength on the big wrench to shift the bolts. One of the old rusted bolts sheared, but the others came free and I swung the plate aside to reveal the small black well of cold water. I could have fetched Garrard’s knife from the foredeck, but I didn’t fancy the sight of his corpse, so instead I rummaged through the wheelhouse cave-lockers and found an old gutting knife. I reached down into the cold water and cut the rope free from the propeller blades. It took less than five minutes.

Peel whimpered at the stern, alternately calling for help and cursing. Once or twice he tried to climb aboard, but the cold had sapped his huge strength. I ignored him as I bolted the prop plate home and laid the deck planks back into place. Then I picked up Garrard’s discarded shotgun and tossed it overboard.

“Help. Please!” Peel whimpered.

I unshackled the pulley from the lifting derrick. “Hold on to that,” I told him.

He grasped the pulley’s hook with his right hand. I took the tackle’s strain, inching him up the transom. Mist-Spinner was thumping and lurching in the broken water. I couldn’t see any of the hidden rocks, but I knew where they were because their presence was betrayed by a swirling turmoil of water not far from the port bow. The water seemed to be sucked down towards the rock pinnacles, then to shatter upwards in a white misting spray. “Come on, you bastard!” I shouted at Peel, urging him to use some of his great strength to help himself. He must have sensed the danger, for he gave a great heave just as a surge of the swell tipped up the stern so that he fell, gasping and exhausted, into the boat.

I could hear the suck and rebound of the water about the rocks. We were close to the rock pinnacles, too close, and the suction of the white water was drawing us closer. I staggered forward, started the engine, and pushed the gear lever forward. For a second the engine faltered and I thought for a terrible second that I hadn’t cleared the propeller blades properly and that we would be drawn crashingly down into the rocks. I rammed the throttle forward, prayed, and somehow the engine recovered. The rocks were perilously close now, just off the port beam. We tipped towards them and I thought we were doomed to slide sideways down the smooth face of the indrawn water to hammer our gunwales on the black rock. I gave Mist-Spinner full rudder and raced the engine. A wave shattered to port, spewing water high over Mist-Spinner ’s aerials. The propeller seemed to be spinning uselessly in the broken water, I felt a sideways lurch, then the blades bit the sea and the boat began to fight her way free. A rebound of water shoved us on our way. I spun the wheel amidships to lessen the resistance to the propeller’s thrust and, inch by inch, then foot by foot, Mist-Spinner gained speed. I turned her to starboard again, and this time there was no resistance and she went sweetly away towards safety. I said a prayer of thanks, pulled back the throttle, then turned to watch the broken sea recede.

Peel had not moved. Perhaps he had been too scared to move, or perhaps he had been too weakened by his long immersion. He just watched me. Beyond him was the rock-shattered swell, and beyond that, somehow safe in the turmoil, was Marianne . She had drifted north of the rising pinnacle. She was pitching and rolling, and I supposed she would drift onwards to be tumbled ashore on a French beach. Then the fog and the night hid her from me and I turned Mist-Spinner westwards.

I’d found four spare shotgun cartridges when I’d searched for the knife to free Mist-Spinner ’s propellers. Now I took them from the cave-locker and let Peel watch me as I loaded the shotgun. He didn’t move, not even when I put the gun down while I checked the fuel. She had two extra tanks in side-lockers, plenty enough for whatever else this night might bring.

Peel watched me go back to the wheelhouse. “Where’s Mr Garrard?” he asked nervously.

“On the foredeck. He hasn’t got a head any more. If you move, you won’t have one either.” I lifted the shotgun on to my lap as I accelerated Mist-Spinner into the shredding fog. I saw the flash of the cardinal buoy, went past it, and only then did I let Mist-Spinner drift.

Because it was time to find my way out of the electronic maze.

The Decca had two waypoints only. We were already at the first so the mystery’s end must lie at the second. I summoned that second waypoint to the screen. It lay at fifty degrees, twelve minutes and forty seconds of arc north, by zero three degrees, forty-six minutes and sixty seconds of arc west. It was 87.2 miles away at a course of 311. So very precise, I thought, so very well planned.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I didn’t turn round to ask the question. That wasn’t insouciance or bravery because I could see his reflection in the windscreen and he wasn’t moving.

He did not answer.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I asked again.

He still did not answer so I whipped round on the helmsman’s chair and fired the right barrel two feet above his head. The pellets probably grazed his bald head, for he whimpered.

“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?”

“We was just supposed to drown you,” he almost whispered in reply, “then sink the little boat. To make it look like you’d drowned and the money had sunk.”

“To make it look as if I’d stolen the money? As well as the painting?”

“Yes, guv.”

“Thank you, Peel,” I said very politely, then turned away from him. I found some old stained charts in a drawer, but I. didn’t really need them. I knew where fifty twelve zero three forty-six was. I could probably have got there blindfold, but I spread a passage chart out all the same, then reloaded the gun’s right barrel. “Did you turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?” I asked it very casually.